Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Tanning Addictive? I bet not.

Um, okay, uh, this is pretty weird.

I'm technically at work right now, so I can't really go into it, so follow the link. Maybe later I'll have time to track down the article and look at it (NOTE: this is a joke), but in the meanwhile I think I'll probably stick with my gut instinct, as reported above.

2 Comments:

At 29 March, 2006 01:19, Anonymous Anonymous said...

That's really interesting. Why do you suspect this is bogus? If seasonal mood disorders (presumably due to a lack of UV exposure) are real, this seems like a logical result.

This post shows up on the livejournal feed as posted at 2:23 AM, which I find amusing given that you mention "I'm technically at work right now."

 
At 29 March, 2006 16:33, Blogger The Neurophile said...

I don't suspect that the research itself is bogus. I just think that the use of the term "addictive" and comparison to addictive drugs--especially opiates--is going over the top.

Ultimately, any enjoyable activity is enjoyable because it stimulates neural activity that connotes to pleasure. Although pleasure and reward activities are not synonymous, they do tend to go hand in hand. I would like to strive to keep the word "addictive" meaningful by restricting its use to things that involve difficult-to-control habitual behaviors.

Also? I can't believe they didn't do this with animals first. Would that not have been the coolest experiment ever?

 

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